**In the winter of 2002–2003, the deadly SARS coronavirus exploded out of China’s ‘wet-blood’ wildlife markets. SARS infected over 8,000 people worldwide and killed almost 800. Yet post-crisis, China laxly enforced bans on the offending markets, only to permit them to flourish soon thereafter. Today’s COVID-19 is the deadly and avoidable legacy of China’s recklessness.
U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo has proclaimed that COVID-19 stems from just such Chinese ‘wet-blood’ markets. While Beijing has praised them as protein sources, their unsanitary practices have long been identified as “perfect viral melting pots” for zoonotic diseases — diseases that jump from animals to man. In COVID-19’s wake, China shut down cities and shuttered the offending Wuhan markets — for now.
Today the world strains to curtail COVID-19, mourn losses, and salvage livelihoods. Tomorrow it must prevent a like recurrence and account for damage done. Tomorrow’s tasks regrettably require forthrightly identifying and addressing Beijing’s wrongful, unnecessary, and repeated misdeeds.
As many, including Dr. Bill Karesh of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, have shown, readily affordable measures, including refrigeration and culturally sensitive regulation, could replace China’s lax and dangerous wet-market practices. Yet Beijing persisted, even after SARS illustrated the international risks. That disturbing record proved a breeding ground for COVID-19 and may recur.**
